Serializing Map Data Structures from Shell Scripts

Shell scripts are widely used in DevOps and CI/CD because they are ubiquitous, dependency-free, and effective for handling command input and output, but they lack a native map structure for storing key-value data. Common CI/CD platforms serialize values into a single delimiter-based file, using special EOF-style delimiters for multiline content, which increases generation and parsing complexity and can create injection risks unless random delimiters are used consistently. RWX instead represents maps through directories, storing each key as a filename and its corresponding value as file contents, an approach it applies to both output values and environment variables. This file-based design simplifies multiline values, avoids delimiter-related injection concerns, and makes shell usage more straightforward, though serializing very large numbers of values may have a minor performance cost.

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